Moon Craters Could Be Coldest Place in Solar System [View All]

[n2doc]

By Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer
posted: 18 September 2009
01:12 pm ET

The coldest place in the solar system might be closer to home than we thought.

New data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) suggests that permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole might be colder even than Pluto and the other objects in the solar system's furthest most reaches.

In its first set of measurements, announced Thursday, LRO's Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, which is conducting the first global survey of the temperature of the lunar surface, found that craters along the lunar south pole that have areas permanently shielded from the sun's light (and suspected to harbor deposits of water ice) have extremely cold temperatures.

"Diviner has recorded minimum daytime brightness temperatures in portions of these craters of less than -397 degrees Fahrenheit," said David Paige, Diviner's principal investigator and a UCLA professor of planetary science. "These super-cold brightness temperatures are, to our knowledge, among the lowest that have been measured anywhere in the solar system, including the surface of Pluto."

more:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090918-cold-moon.html